


A Normal Life

by LananiA3O



Series: Batman: Arkham Compendium [16]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Birthday, Family Bonding, Family Shenanigans, Gen, Headcanon, Heartbreaking, Heartwarming, Jason-Centric, Paranoia, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Bonding, Swearing, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7781809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is August 16th in Gotham yet again. As Jason does his best to ignore the painful memories his birthday evokes, fate seems determined to make him celebrate his 21st.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for and gifted to my dear friend and colleague Virginie, who is at least partially responsible for my love of the Arkham canon and Jason in particular. She wanted a fanfic in which Jason actually has a life outside of vigilantism. We also talked about how Tim canonically mentions that even Alfred sings better than Johnny Charisma, which means that Alfred either sings in the manor while Tim lives there or he serenades Batman and Robin while they are on patrol. Virginie, I think your exact words were “I want that fic”. Here you go. Enjoy.
> 
> Disclaimer: Only the Arkham games and their DLC are considered canon for this fic. Set in the same canon as my other fics, Red, August 16th and Rorschach.

„Are you deliberately trying to beat the department record in self-imposed, unpaid overtime or is your clock just broken?”

 _Sara Kingsley, Translation and Technical Documentation department._ Jason could hear the amusement in her voice, even if he could not see the smile on her face, what with his gaze still firmly fixated on the sketch in front of him. Judging from the volume, she was just outside his little office, peeking around the door frame, careful not to cross the unmarked border into his territory. _Mild obsessive compulsive disorder_ , the little voice in his head supplied. Underneath her words, he could hear the faint tapping of her fingers against the frame. _A nervous displacement activity, done in compensation for a lack of reply._

Even now, almost ten months after _that_ night, Jason still had not figured out where that little voice came from or what it was. Robin had died in the Asylum under the glowing J of a branding iron. The Arkham Knight had… disappeared… on top of Merchant Bridge when Jason had sunk his military gear into the bottom of Gotham Bay. He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more: the fact that he did not know what was going on inside his own head, or the fact that his Robin conditioning was still strong enough to haunt him into every single corner of his life.

“Just trying to finish this early so I can have some spare time tomorrow,” he finally replied, hands still racing across the paper, adding the last arrows and numbers. It was only half a lie. The deadline for these sketches _was_ tomorrow, Wednesday, 17:00 EDT. Considering which day it was _today_ and how it would most likely end, he was pretty damn sure he would not be coming in tomorrow. At all. Spare time indeed.

“Happy drawing, then.” A soft, little thump of paper on metal. The clacking of mid-high heels. “And happy birthday, Jason.”

His hand froze above the paper. There was knowing and then there was _knowing_. He had known that it was August 16 th. He had also hoped that he would just be able to blissfully ignore said truth if only he didn’t pay any attention to it. At all. Now, the words kept bouncing around his skull. _Happy birthday._ The last time someone had wished him a happy birthday, it had ended with a shot to his chest, on camera for Batman’s viewing pleasure, in a tiny cell beneath Arkham. Jason’s stomach turned at the memory. Underneath his shirt, the scar burned in fresh, hot pain.

Suddenly, the office was too small. _You asked for a small office_ , the voice reminded him, not at all helpful. And even though it was a rare sunny day in Gotham and the sinking summer sun cast warm light through the window, it just felt cold. Cold and damp and dark. _You’re on the twenty-second floor, not in the basement. Breathe, Jason._

“Goddamn these fucking panic attacks!” The pencil came apart with a sharp snap, as did its two brothers who had been lying peacefully, lined up like soldiers on parade, next to his sketchpad. He had just enough clarity to remove the now finished drawing before throwing the pad against the metal lockers next to the door. Atop the aluminum case, the little red box with the silver bow trembled sharply with the impact. He was half expecting a jack to burst out of it.

 _PTSD-induced paranoia_ , not-Robin stated without missing a beat, just before he planted his fist in one of the lockers. One of the tiny scratches on his knuckles slowly turned red, drawing another string of curses. He wondered if he could get the locker replaced without Lucius finding out about it. He was sure there was something in this part-time technical design contract he had signed that made property damage grounds for immediate termination. “Fired from my first job not even half a month in… yeah, that sounds like me.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to fire you…” Lucius’ voice sounded from the doorway, warm and friendly as ever, with just a hint of amusement swinging underneath. “But I must inform you that replacing the locker will reflect on your next pay slip.”

Lucius… Ever-patient, never-angry Lucius… It took all of Jason’s willpower not to plant his palms in his own face. Of all the people that could have witnessed his little outburst, it had to have been the one person in this company he actually gave a damn about. _Way to go_. With a deep sigh, Jason squared his shoulders and returned to his desk. “I’ll file the request to H &M right now, but since you’re here…” He slipped the drawing into the inconspicuous brown envelope that held the other fourteen pieces and handed it over to Lucius. “These are the final sketches for the Santini project, all good to go. I _specifically_ added a note ‘all measurements in inches’ in bright red at the top of each page this time. Wouldn’t want them to sink another ten million bucks into manufacturing equipment three times too small.”

“No, we would not,” the old fox grinned at him. The first time they had heard back from their manufacturing partner in Italy, Lucius had called him to his office ASAP. Jason had taken the long walk up the fire escape stairs to the top floor thinking about all the things that could possibly have prompted his upcoming dismissal. Why else would the CEO want to see him immediately? As it had turned out, Lucius had merely wanted to show him the pictures of the new turbine and engine, looking positively tiny and adorable next to the aircraft wings, to share the good laugh at this metric-imperial confusion. To his own surprise, Jason had actually managed to laugh at it. As strange as the sound had appeared, coming from his own throat and all, it had felt good. The memory was a welcome counterpart to the pain in his knuckles.

Lucius accepted the envelope with a quick nod, only to hand back a letter-sized envelope of his own. The word CONFIDENTIAL glared back at Jason daringly from the white paper. He opened it carefully and couldn’t help raise an eyebrow at the piece of paper in front of him. “I thought Wayne Enterprises does everything electronically? Payments and pay slips.”

“Usually, yes, and I can assure you the money has been transferred to your account already, but since today is a special day and this is – to my knowledge – your first… normal… job, I figured something a little more tangible might be appropriate. I remember I felt like a king amongst men when I got my first pay check.”

 _A king amongst men…_ Jason remembered that feeling. It had been how he had felt a lifetime ago, when Batman had told him that he wanted him to be the new Robin. It was a silly, deceptive feeling. Still, he could appreciate the gesture. Lucius was only trying to help. _Manners…_ Joker cooed in the back of his head and Jason bit his lip hard as he forced a ghost of a smile onto his lips and looked up at Lucius. “Thank you, Lucius – I appreciate it.” He did. He really did. And he hated himself for not being able to feel the kind of undiluted joy Lucius had probably hoped to trigger. He hated his mind for reminding him of the feeling of hot, glowing iron on his cheek for not attaching ‘sir’ to the end of that sentence. He hated the fact that, given the subtle change in the lines of his face, the way the spark slowly dimmed in Lucius’ eyes, his former mentor and now boss was aware that he had failed.

Lucius did not deserve this. He was the one who had helped him file all the paperwork necessary to transform from a ghost back into a fully fledged person – most importantly a real, legit passport, and driver’s license – not to mention the paperwork necessary to claim his legal inheritance, because as much as Jason had wanted to flip Bruce the finger one last time by refusing his claims, he had spent too much time living in extreme poverty to look a gift horse worth millions of dollars in the mouth. He had offered him this job, a semblance of normality, an opportunity to regularly do the thing he loved so much – drawing – and to pay him good, legit money for it, too, all in complete awareness and deliberate ignorance of what Jason had done last Halloween, and here he was and all he gave in return was a forced gratitude packed into six letters. Lucius deserved so much better.

“I’m sorry, Lucius.”

“Apology accepted and no hard feelings, Jason… under one condition.” The smirk that stretched across Lucius’ face was downright intimidating. Jason had seen it before, mostly whenever Bruce or Lucius had backed one of their business partners (or rivals) so far into a corner that any answer short of ‘yes, sir, right away sir’ was unthinkable. He had walked right into the trap and Lucius knew it. WE’s CEO turned to the locker once more, picked up the red gift box and placed it right in front of him onto the now nearly empty desk. “Do open your present from Miss Kingsley some time today and thank her for it when you see her tomorrow. You probably noticed already, but the poor girl has been trying to get your attention ever since you set foot in this office.”

As Lucius slowly headed for the elevator at the other end of the hall, Jason found himself staring at the tiny red box with dread. He _had_ noticed. His Robin conditioning had made it impossible not to. She was the only person in this company – outside of Lucius and the front door receptionist – who always greeted him, and by name no less. Not for the first time Jason wondered just how screwed up his past had left him that his first thought upon noticing that a rather cute girl was taking interest in him was to wonder if it was a setup and whether he should start planning potential exit routes and combat strategies, rather than just returning the gesture by saying ‘hey Sara, how’s it goin’. At least, that’s what he assumed he was probably supposed to be doing, what normal people were doing. Jason’s life had never been normal. He was pretty sure he was doing her a favor by not dragging her into it. Still, Lucius had insisted. With a quick sigh, Jason reached for the box and started untying the bow.

Dick would simply have torn through the paper, Jason was sure. He remembered his first Christmas at Wayne Manor, watching Dick claw through the paper like a wild animal in his haste and impatience. Alfred and Jason had both scowled at the distinct lack of grace, Jason because he could not fathom how anyone could display such ferocity over something that was not food, shelter or another vital survival object, Alfred because he could not fathom how anyone could display such ferocity, period. Dick would have _destroyed_ this stupid bow and the wrapping paper. Then again, Dick would probably have done the normal thing and asked the girl out before she had to resort to stealth-planting little presents in his office. The fresh rage that started bubbling up in his gut did nothing to improve his fine motor skills. Maybe tearing up some wrapping paper was not such a bad idea after all.

It was the ringing of his cell phone that saved the wrapping from an unsavory demise. He retrieved the little device from his backpack and grimaced at the scratches that were starting to show on the casing. It had been a long, long time since he had kept a single phone for long enough to show wear and tear, but after the eighth time he had changed burner phones and consequently numbers, Barbara had made it very clear to him that, if she had to change his number in her contact list one more time, she would never speak another word to him again. He had doubted she’d go through with it, but Barbara, the only person he knew who would be able to hack the security systems he had placed on his own gear and his own apartment, was not a person he wanted to piss off. And so he had relented, sticking to the same phone, the same number, for almost three months now. Another thing that should probably feel normal. Another thing that didn’t. And seeing which number was calling did _not_ improve his mood in the slightest.

“Replacement.”

“Jackass.”

It had become their standard greeting. In front of Barbara, he was Tim. Again, Barb was the one person he was actually slightly scared to piss off. But in absence of her watchful eyes and attentive ears, Tim Drake was and always would be ‘Replacement’. At first, the moniker had done an adequate job at pissing off the new Robin, but eventually fury had petered out into thinly veiled hostility, which slowly lost its bite. Now, seven months after he had first gotten back in touch with Barb, Dick and the replacement, it was nothing more than a standard. Normal. So Drake had come up with something else in return.

“Don’t tell me you got yourself stuck in some kind of death trap and I need to come and save your sorry ass. Again.”

“Nah, that was last month,” Tim replied non-chalantly. Back then, stuck between a flooded, electrified floor, a ceiling with spinning, razor-sharp metal blades, and spiked walls that closed in slowly, Robin had been decidedly less amused. Both of them had barely gotten out of that room alive, only to be greeted by a gang of murderous thugs. That had turned out to be the bigger challenge as Red Hood’s half of the bunch had ended up mostly dead, which had gotten them into another ‘we do not kill’/’I am not him’ argument that had nearly, very nearly made him put a couple of rounds into that neat little red vest. “I really could use your help, though,” the replacement finally continued, “unless you want a fresh new shipment of two tons of venom to hit Gotham’s drug market by tomorrow morning.”

 _Venom…_ Of all the drugs they could possibly smuggle into Gotham... Jason shuddered at the thought of just how many amped up thugs two tons of the stuff would be able to produce. The only other explanation for someone moving that much of it was to use it up in clinical research. The last person to try that had been Joker. The last thing Gotham needed was another Titan.

“So what’s the plan?” He already knew that he was going to regret this. The question was how much. He stuffed the half-unwrapped box into one of the pockets in his hoodie, grabbed his keycard and backpack and headed for the door. “We crack a few skulls to find out which dock the shipment will arrive at, then sink the entire boat into Gotham Bay?” He hoped that was what it would be. He needed to punch someone tonight.

“Actually, I already did the skull-cracking.” Disappointment number one. “There’ll be two simultaneous shipments: one at Dixon Dock West and one at Port Adams. Don’t have the exact time, though, so we’ll have to stake it out.” Disappointment number two.

Stakeouts were boring, even at the best of times. If there was one thing Dick and Jason had had in common, it’s that neither one of them had been good at waiting, sitting still. Those were the times when his mind went digging and it never struck gold. Only pitch and ash. Today was not a day he wanted his mind to go wandering or digging anywhere. Still, this was two tons of venom. “I’ll take Port Adams.” The door locked behind him with a loud beep, confirming that the alarm was now active. All around him, the office was eerily quiet and empty, cast into muddy orange by the rapidly sinking sun. He doubted there was anybody else left in the building, outside of security.

“Do we have any intel on how many guns and knives they’ll bring to the party?”

“None.” The replacement sounded adequately displeased. Digging into a smuggling operation of this size with no info on expected resistance was never a good idea. “Last guy I interrogated had previous ties to Bane’s crew, though.”

That was even more bad news. Bane had always picked his men carefully and Santa Prisca was a candy dish of high-powered, illegal weaponry and expensive drugs. Not to mention completely ineffectual law enforcement. He still remembered the first months after his escape, hiding in Santa Prisca, rebuilding himself and planning for his eventual army and attack. As the elevator rushed down to the ground floor, little flares and spikes of pain erupted in his shoulders, back and right ankle. Another thunder storm rolling in. _Fuck this nerve damage_. “Expect guns. Lots of guns. Military grade. Goons and gear are easy to come by in Central America.”

“Got it.”

 _You would know_ , was what he had probably meant to say, but Jason pushed the thought back into the abyss it had come from. Now was not the time. He scribbled his name and exit time hastily into the attendance book at the security desk and swiped his card one last time to get out of the building. The sun was almost gone. In the distance, the slow rumble of thunder mingled with the city noise. This was going to be a painful night.

“I’ll go grab my gear. Be back in ten.” He hung up without waiting for a reply, instead dashing into the alleys of Miagani Island. There weren’t as many hiding spots here as there were in Founders’ forgotten lower city, but Jason knew this city better than the back of his hand. He went for the little hideout near Pinkey’s Orphanage and retrieved the small black duffle bag from its secret little niche beneath a fake floor board. The Kevlar vest felt cool and heavy under his shirt, but it also felt safe. Even to this day, walking through Gotham’s streets in normal clothes made him feel like a sitting duck. The shin guards and leather gloves came next, followed by the leather jacket. He frowned at the safety pins holding together the two flaps where some bastard’s knife had nearly cut his back open. The first time one of his jackets had gotten ruined, he had made an effort to repair it properly. After the sixth time, he had given up.

_Alfred would out-scowl Bruce if he could see this…_

It still hurt. He slipped the jacket over his hoodie quickly and reached for the helmet. Even after all this time, thinking of Alfred still hurt. Barbara had said he had missed Jason. It had been the first time in a long, long time that he had believed anything anyone in the bat family had said to him. If there was one thing he had been hoping for, after his… confrontation… with Bruce, it had been to have a chance to talk to Alfred. To explain. To apologize. Now he was god only knew where with Bruce, cut off from the rest of them, and with every day that passed, Jason’s hope that he might get to see him again, just once, dwindled a little more. The fact that nobody else seemed to share his belief that Bruce and Alfred were not dead, that the explosion of the manor had just been a cover, did not make it any better.

It took all of three seconds for all the sensors in his helmet to boot up. “Call Oracle.” The coms link came online with a slight static crackle. Sure enough, Barbara’s answer came before he had even finished reloading and holstering his guns and stocking up on grenades.

“Hey Red. How’s it going?”

Something was off. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he could feel that something was off. His hands froze immediately. “You tell me. You’re the one who sounds like something’s wrong.”

 _Slight pause. Faint static, possibly from a hitched breath_ , not-Robin analyzed. He could practically hear Barbara wince through the line. To her credit, by the time she replied, her voice sounded as if nothing were wrong at all. “Oh, you know… Just this and that… two tons of venom rolling into the city tonight, but other than that—“

“One ton.” Jason corrected as he secured his grapnel gun in its holster. “One ton tops. Ain’t no way any of this stuff gets into Port Adams. You’d better tell repl—birdie to not fuck up his end of the deal. I don’t want to have to save his sorry ass again.”

“Language.”

That nearly made him laugh. Apparently, someone was channeling not-so-dead Bruce. “Priorities, Oracle.”

***

Most times Jason enjoyed being right. This was not one of those times.

A storm had rolled into Gotham, as he had predicted, and it had brought another burst of cold, harsh rain with it. Back in his days as Robin, that alone – being stuck, huddled on the top level platform of a container crane under a hail of freezing rain, waiting for something that might or might not happen within the next hour – would have been bad enough to call it a lousy night. Now, the chill that seeped through his clothes and into his bones brought up even worse memories. Not just his time in the streets. Not just lousy, uneventful nights on patrol. A cell. A tiny, tiled cell underneath Arkham. In the back of his head, Joker’s laughter once more echoed off his skull. The addition of nerve damage in his shoulders, back and ankle did not help. It brought back bad memories of crowbars, meat hooks and hundreds of hours of torture.

It was the sound of cracking thunder right above his head, about ninety minutes into this sorry excuse of a stakeout, that eventually jostled him from his little corner. For a moment, he was not in Port Adams. He was not in the rain. He was in front of a camera. And it wasn’t thunder. It was a gun shot. The metal tore through his skin and muscle without mercy, burrowing itself deep in his chest. Darkness claimed him and drowned out his senses. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel, couldn’t think. When the haze finally cleared, his heart beat pounded in his ear like a set of taiko drums. _Too many beats per minute_ , not-Robin scowled. His visor was giving off a faint beep, reminding him that his vitals were off the charts. All around him, the laughter slowly swelled.

_Hahaha. Joke’s on you. Robins die easy. Why so serious?_

“You okay, Red?”

And then there was this idiot. Jason’s trigger finger was itching. The last thing he wanted right now was conversation. “Fine. Shut up and watch the docks.” The numbers flew by quickly on the visor of his helmet. Port Adams still used the same lousy security systems it had used three years ago, when he had escaped from Gotham on a cargo ship headed to Santa Prisca. _The Lucia,_ not-Robin remembered. Why nobody ever updated their security protocols was a mystery to him, but apparently everyone was A-OK with outdated passwords. He could only imagine how pissed off his own lieutenants had been when he had sent through updated protocols and logins twice a week.

Paranoia. Another useful disorder he had picked up during his time under the Bat’s wing. Went very bad with PTSD though. Right now, it was _not_ helping.

“If your intel is right and the shipments are coming in tonight through Port Adams and Dixon Dock West, then it’s off the books. There’s nothing in Port Adams’ shipping logs that’s even suggesting a night-time shipment. Gotta be extra-vigilant.”

“Right.” _You are full of it_ , was what he probably really wanted to say, but Jason bit back the snarky remark that tried to worm its way up his throat in response. Barb was listening, after all. And besides, if he had not been completely mistaken, there had been a hint of concern swinging underneath the word. It nearly made him laugh, but he dared not. There was enough laughter in his head already, and none of it was friendly. Besides, the last time he had laughed on his birthday, it had been three months after he had been captured by Joker and the psychopath had fed him cake spiked with Joker venom. His lungs were still scarred from that. So, no. No laughter on August 16th. _Bad idea. Really, fucking bad idea._

Another hour passed by. The thunder storm slowly passed by, too, but the pain remained. _Why the fuck did I agree to his?_ His plan for tonight had been simple: either find some of Harley’s clown-faced gang and beat the ever-loving daylights out of them (if he just tried hard enough, he was sure he could picture them as Joker) or go home and get smashed. Neither one would keep out the nightmares, but at least his waking hours wouldn’t be so bad. Now though… Now he was stuck in the rain, huddled on a crane, waiting for a shipment of venom to roll into the harbor… at some point.

 _Fuck Barb._ He was gonna let the replacement have it right here and now. He was just about to start what was going to be a long tirade of insults when the coms line crackled with noise. Apparently, Oracle was ready to honor her name by not only knowing all of the present, but predicting the future as well. _Let her rant then, Jason mused. Better_ _her voice in my head than Joker’s._

“Je m'baladais sur l'avenue,

Le cœur ouvert à l'inconnu,

J'avais envie de dire "bonjour"

À n'importe qui.

N'importe qui”

 _What the f_ —Behind this mask, Jason’s jaw dropped. _Joe Dassin’s Les Champs-Élysées_ , not-Robin observed and Jason wished he was an actual, corporal being that he could beat the snot out of. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe he wasn’t on a crane during the worst stakeout ever. Maybe he really had gone home and had gotten so smashed that he was now hallucinating Barbara singing at the other end of the bat com. A very determined Barbara, who did not seem to mind the inattentive audience.

“Et ce fut toi

Je t'ai dit

N'importe quoi,

Il suffisait de te parler pour t'apprivoiser.”

“Honey, please stop.” Okay, this was weird. His nightmares did not usually feature the replacement outside of having him tie Jason up, beat him, torture him, electrocute him, all the while telling him that he had been the worst Robin ever. This… This was not a dream. He was sure of it. About eighty-three percent sure at least.

“Aux Champs-Elysées,” Barbara’s voice slithered through the coms channel,

“Aux Champs-Elysées,” growing louder every second, as if she were trying to sing against the hammering rain.

“Au soleil, sous la pluie,

A midi ou à minuit”

“Barb, sweetie, please…”

“Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées.”

“Honey, you sing worse than Alfred and if you keep this up you’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight!”

At last, the line went silent. For a moment, Jason could swear he had heard someone snicker in the background. Which was impossible. He had seen the new security systems Barb had installed in the Clock Tower, heck, he had helped her perfect them! Nobody was going in or out of there without her permission.

“I’m just trying to keep up the most venerable tradition of stakeout serenades.”

If the replacement could hear her pout, he did not care. “That was neither venerable nor enjoyable when Alfred did it and even he sang better than you.”

“Had better taste in music, too,” Jason grumbled as his ears recovered from the noise. “At least Alfred usually picked something classic, yet obscure, and not in the least earwormy. I’ll be having this song stuck in my head for a week. Thanks, B.”

“You are most welcome.” If he hadn’t known better, Jason could have sworn she sounded positively proud. Probably had a disgusting million-watts smile like Dick’s plastered on her face, too.

“So… Alfred used to serenade you and Bruce, too?” In contrast to Barbara’s cranked up to eleven singing, the replacement’s voice sounded like a shred of paper. Jason found it hard to blame him. His ears were probably still recovering from the trauma, too.

“Every time we had more than thirty minutes of radio silence. I swear Bruce would scowl so hard you could _hear_ it on the other end of the line.”

The replacement laughed at that. Jason had expected to cringe at the sound, laughter and August 16th and all that, but surprisingly enough, the sound passed through his ear canal and brain without triggering anything horrible. It was an innocent laugh, childish, like only hopelessly hopeful Robins were capable of.

“Hey, Hood…” The pause after could not have lasted for more than two seconds, but for Jason it seemed like an eternity. He braced himself for whatever was coming next. If the replacement was going to ask him to sing, he would smash the guy’s teeth in, consequences be damned. Singing was not a skill anyone in the bat family was blessed with. “When I first asked Alf about the singing, he said you once used it to prank Bruce. Is that true?”

That stumped him. He tried to recover the relevant memory. It didn’t take too long.

“We were having a stakeout outside of one of Two Face’s safehouses in the Coventry.” His mind fumbled for details. It wasn’t easy wafting through the infinite mess that was Joker’s laughter and Batman’s disappointed stares, but slowly the details came back to him. “We had had a fight a couple of days before. I had failed to measure up to Dick’s performance in the advanced gliding drills _again_ and he had looked like he was just about ready to give up on me. Words were said. I might have trashed a console or two.” Even now, years later, thinking about it hurt. He had never been good enough, never good enough compared to the Golden Son, Dick Grayson. It wasn’t Dick’s fault. He probably hadn’t even known what Bruce had been doing. Jason had always been a silent sufferer.

“Alfred had noticed, though.” He wasn’t sure when his thoughts had turned into actual words, but they had. _Damage already done, best get it over with_ , not-Robin recommended and Jason was too tired not to comply. “He came to me afterwards, told me that that had been very ‘uncouth’ behavior on Bruce’s part, so he asked me what my favorite rock song was.”

“What is your favorite rock song?” Robin asked quietly and damn if there hadn’t been the slightest bit of amusement in his voice.

“Back then, it was Sound of Madness by Shinedown.” If he didn’t know better, both Barb and the replacement were probably looking up the lyrics already. _Serves them right_ , Jason thought sourly _. It’s gonna make them cringe harder than me. Harsher in hindsight and all that._ “I thought Alfred was gonna replace Bruce’s wake up alarm with that song or something like that. I mean, you know he really didn’t like rock, right? Rage of a beast and all that. But nope. We were on that rooftop. Rain hailing down. Freezing. Waiting. And all of a sudden Alfred starts singing Sound of Madness.”

He was expecting laughter. He was expecting shock. What he did not expect was a third voice busting through the coms. “I would pay you half my monthly salary to hear a recording of that.”

“Goldie?” When had Dick joined the channel? What had brought him to Gotham? Was there some big crisis going on in Blüd that he didn’t know about? “The fuck are you doing here?”

“Babs, please tell me we have a recording of that on the batcomputer backup. I mean, Bruce recorded _everything forever and ever_ , didn’t he?”

“Goldie, I won’t ask again: What. The fuck. Are you. Doing. In. Gotham?”

“Oh, you know…” If this were a holo com, Jason was sure he would be able to watch Dick blush. Just as he always did before lying. “Just helping Babs… with some preparations.”

“Hey, Dick, have you seen any spices anywhere in this kitchen?” Since when did Barb need help navigating her own kitchen?

“Top shelf above the microwave. There’s an entire rack mounted to the door—“

“Oh, you fucking little—“ A thousand words, each more vulgar than the next sprang to Jason’s mind, but none of them measured up to the fury that had suddenly gripped him and made him jump from his hiding spot. “I swear to god, Grayson, if you displace a single fucking thing in MY kitchen I will murder your ass!”

“Very smooth, bro—“ Robin’s voice came through the channel loud and clear and he shut it off instantly. This had all been a setup. There were no venom shipments. No stakeouts. This was all one big joke on him and everyone was in on it. In the back of his head, Joker’s laughter grew louder once more. As he grappled from rooftop to rooftop, he could have sworn he could see his little messages (hahaha, joke’s on you) scribbled on every building in Jason’s own blood. Every landing sent fresh pain through his ankle.

If he had made it from Port Adams to the Diamond District in less than three minutes back in his time as Robin, Bruce might have been at least the tiniest bit proud, or at the very least he might have approved, but right now, Jason could not have cared less. He entered the apartment complex through the rooftop access, took off his helmet, shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around the red visor with the inside out. The last thing he needed right now was one of his neighbors walking in on him running down the hall in full Red Hood gear. He took the stairs down to the fifth floor three steps at a time and practically punched his access code into the keypad next to the door. The retina scanner in the peephole nearly exhausted what little patience was left in him, before the lock clicked and the door opened.

As expected, Barb and Dick were in his kitchen. Correction. The battlefield that _had_ once been his kitchen. He stared in horror at the counters covered in grease, oil, flour, spices and various other things he could not identify at first glance. He made the mistake of looking at the floor next and cringed at the sight of stray onion and garlic peels littering the previously shiny tiles. “What the hell do you guys think you’re doing here?”

“We’re… uh… making some guacamole and chili dip… you know… for the chips and nachos,” Dick offered with his hands raised in surrender and a look that basically screamed ‘please don’t put me down’. Right now, his chances were not very good and he seemed to know it.

“Don’t forget the cake.” Barb added, much calmer, her gaze still fixated on a bowl full of homemade frosting. “We’re making Black Forest cake. That always was your favorite, right? Chocolate, cherries, some brandy—“

His brain processed the words just fine, but none of it properly registered. _Why? What for? When? How?_ “What have you guys _done_ to my kitchen?!”

“We’ll clean it up as soon as we’re done cookin’ and bakin’, I promise.” Dick offered in conciliation. It did not help.

“Like you even know what clean is, _Dick_.” It was a low blow and an unoriginal one, too, he knew, but it was all his traumatized brain could come up with. “I remember your room and I’ve seen your apartment.” On the other end of the kitchen, the egg timer on Barbara’s phone went off. Unfazed by all the craziness in front of her, she rolled up to the oven, removed the cake and quickly set to putting on the frosting and the maraschino cherries. The sheer calm with which she maneuvered the minefield that was his home right now was nothing short of surreal.

“And you…” He snatched the icing bag from her and earned himself a slight squeal in protest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I know you’re the one who got me this place and I appreciate it, really, but why the fuck do you think I put biometric security on my door and deadbolt locks on my windows?”

“Because god forbid somebody came in and trampled all across your shiny floors with their dirty boots?”

It had been a joke. Dick Grayson always joked. Jason had known that since he had first met him on his fourteenth birthday, seven years ago. Dick Grayson, he had eventually come to realize, was physically incapable of standing still and of not cracking at least one joke per conversation. Except right now, the joke was on him and it hurt. It hurt more than the nerve damage in his shoulders, more than his nine-times-broken ankle, more than the scar in his back where the crowbar had nearly crippled him, more than the chocolate-cherry-venom cake Joker had force-fed to him on his sixteenth birthday, more than the bullet to the chest on his seventeenth. It hurt. And so his body did the first thing he had ever learned doing. _Do onto others before they do onto you_.

His fist shot up in a straight right hook that connected painfully with Dick’s jaw, sending spatters of blood onto the previously immaculate cupboards. Someone – the replacement – grabbed him by the shoulders and stepped in front of him before he could do any more damage. He had no idea when Drake had gotten here, or how he had gotten through the door for that matter.

“Easy, Jason! Easy! It wasn’t meant to be an insult. We just wanted to have a surprise birthday party for you, that’s all.”

“Surprise?!” He spat the word out like it was poison. “You know what my last birthday surprise was? A bullet to the heart, you fucking replacement jackass!” He watched Robin’s eyes widen in shock. _Good, let him chew on that_. “And you two…” Barb and Dick had now joined together by his side, looking equal parts worried and hurt. He couldn’t have cared less. “Do you guys even know what it means to me, having a place that’s clean and warm and safe and nobody else’s fucking business? I guess not. Why would you. You never had to fish your only meal in three days out of a fucking dumpster and wolf it down in a cardboard fort under a fucking bridge in fucking Gotham winter!”

He remembered those days as if it were yesterday. There had been too many of them to count. When he had first arrived at the manor, it hadn’t been all the fancy décor or the silverware that had impressed him. Heck, not even the batcave had been as impressive to him as the fact that there was a spotlessly clean, instantly warm shower in _his own bathroom_. With a lock. That actually worked. Back then, he had been sure it had to be a dream. Or a scam. Any day now Bruce Wayne would come to his room and either tell him what sick perverted paedo fantasy he wanted to play out with Jason, or just skip the middle man and collect his payment by force. That’s how it always went. Either that or the cardboard box under the bridge. Take your pick. When his young, traumatized brain had finally realized that it was never going to happen, he had thrown himself into learning every single thing about how to keep this luxury for himself. In hindsight, maybe that was the reason Alfred had always been so fond of him. The fact that Jason had always been helping him with the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, asking for instructions and keeping his own little corner as neat and tidy as possible. He had worked so hard to regain that feeling, a little bit of it at least, for this apartment.

Alfred would weep if he could see it now.

“Get out of my apartment.” The words came out decidedly less angry and more bitter than he had intended. His mind wanted to scream. His body wanted to cry. “All of you, out! Now!”

“No.” Of all three of them, the replacement was not the one Jason would have pictured speaking up first, but he had. He watched Robin remove his cowl and cape. He looked so much younger then. They all did. “We are not going anywhere. And if you’re really honest with yourself, you don’t want us to leave, either.”

“What do _you_ know about what _I_ want, _replacement_?” He watched Barbara open her mouth to protest at his naming choice, only for Robin, _her husband_ , not-Robin reminded him, to shake his head at her.

“Jason, I may never have had a chance to get to know you as a brother, but you _are_ my brother and whether you like it or not that means I care about you. You want this place nice and warm and neat and tidy not because you couldn’t deal with it if it wasn’t. Because you’re right, you’ve been through much worse and neither one of the three of us will ever be truly able to relate to that. You could deal. But you don’t want to. You want to do more than deal. You want to _live_. You want to have a _home_. I wasn’t there for your fourteenth and fifteenth birthday, but Barb and Dick and Alfred, too – they told me all about it. The movie-trashing. The snacks. The jabs. You were laughing. You were smiling. You were happy. Safe and warm and sound and happy and you’re trying to get a piece of that back. And that’s not your _fault_ , it’s your _right_. You deserve it.”

He was faintly aware of Barb snatching the icing bag from him once more and finishing the frosting on the cake. Behind Robin, Dick had started cleaning his blood from the cupboards and the mess from the counters. Some part of him still thought he should just shoot the three of them right now.

“And here’s something that will blow your mind, Jason.” Robin’s hands were on Jason’s shoulders now, light as a feather. “We want you to be happy. We want you to be smiling and laughing again. We want you to feel safe and warm and sound and loved.” A hint of a smile ghosted across Tim’s lips. “And the sooner you step aside, the sooner Dick and Barb can clean up the mess they made of your kitchen. You and I can get out of our dirty boots and then we can all sit down on your couch, enjoy some snacks and cake and watch the trashy movie we brought.”

“What movie?” Why was it always the insignificant details that his mind latched onto? He had three intruders in his own fucking apartment!

“Slipstream,” Dick answered while scrubbing away at the counter.

“It’s starring Samwise Gamgee as a tech genius who invents a time-rewinding gadget that he uses to try and rob a bank,” Barbara added as she started rolling the food into the living room. “Oh, and at one point in the movie a single bullet hole through a cabin window makes an entire plane crash.”

“What?” Jason knew Dick and Barb had a talent for finding horribly inaccurate, so-good-it’s-bad B-movies, but this sounded too ridiculous, even for their standards. “You’re joking.”

Next to him, the replac—Tim grinned as he struggled out of his boots. “Who knows? Only one way to find out, right?” He watched his ‘younger brother’ place the shoes neatly on the mat by the door before plopping down on the far right of the couch. Barb climbed out of her chair agile as ever and curled up into his left side, leaving one empty seat between her and Dick, who once again had a million-watts smile plastered on his face. The broken lip barely even stood out.

“So, are you coming Jaybird, or do I have to go all human octopus on you?”

Just the thought made him cringe. He had yet to master any form of escape artistry that would allow him to weasel out of a Dick Grayson hug. For a moment, the door to the hallway looked strangely inviting. Unfortunately, short of shooting all three of them, he was sure there was no way he was getting out of his apartment without getting tackled and restrained, octopus hug and all.

The guns came first. He set them neatly one next to the other onto what was once more an immaculate countertop next to the stove, followed by his flashbangs and grapnel gun. He was just about to ditch the hoodie to remove his Kevlar when he noticed the bulge in his right pocket.

The box was dented and slightly torn all over, but the stupid bow was still intact. He shoved it over one of the dented corners and pried the lid open, only to find a single piece of folded paper. The handwriting was spun silver bordering on calligraphy.

_This will be last time I bother you, because as a wise man once said: If you truly desire something, let it go. If it does not return, it was never yours to begin with. If it does, it will be yours forever._

As the words filtered through his brain, his gaze returned to the trio waiting for him by the couch. Nobody had touched any of the snacks, or the remote for that matter. It was his party after all. Even after all that had happened, they were here for him. He had done his best to let them—no, to make them go.

And they had returned. For him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An awful movie, three highly-skilled intruders and a chocolate-cherry cake. What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Following popular demand and because I am a masochistic writer who just loves staying up way too long to write angsty stories, I have decided to actually write out the party as well. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Additional warnings for this one: lots of references to past torture, references to alcoholism and open discussion of attempted suicide and really heavy PTSD.

Two minutes and fifteen seconds.

That is how long it had taken in the end. He knew because he had been half-consciously watching time tick away in the bright red letters of the stove clock.

Two minutes and fifteen seconds to decide whether it was safe to ditch the hoodie and the Kevlar. On one hand, he had three highly trained martial artists and intruders on his couch, who had just broken into his home, helped themselves to his possessions and were perfectly capable of doing some serious damage. On the other hand, two of them happened to be his brothers by law if not by blood, making the third his actual sister _in_ law. Jason still hadn’t the foggiest how the hell that had happened. But it had.

In the end, he decided to ditch the Kevlar, but keep the hoodie.

The strange and uncomfortable feeling of being a sitting duck returned almost instantly and he zipped the hood closed to keep out the chill that came with it. _Calm down, Jason. This is your apartment, not Arkham_. On the couch, Dick nudged closer to the edge to make room between him and Barbara.

“Do you honestly think I’m gonna plop right down between the two of you after that stunt you guys just pulled on me?” The look of hurt fluttered off Dick’s face as quickly as it had come. Most people would probably have missed it. Jason wished he had. It wasn’t the first time that he cursed his two years of Robin training that night. He had a nagging feeling that it wouldn’t be the last. With a quick sigh, Jason sunk down against the wall next to the living room window. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sit down and watch the screen, not by any definition of the word, but it would allow him to cover all the exits. As a bonus, everyone else was now on his right side. No more reason to hide his face in the red hood. Most importantly, it was not the couch.

“Someone please get that movie rollin’ before I change my mind…”

To her eternal credit, Barbara neither protested nor gave the slightest sign of offense to any of his words or actions as she reached for her laptop. Of course she had already wired it to the TV he hardly ever used for anything but live news coverage, cranked up the picture quality to turn it into a veritable home theater and optimized the sound system to boot. It was classic Barbara. Ask her to connect a few cables and she’ll turn both devices into one giant super-machine. From the previously black screen, Sean Astin’s face stared back at him.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eig—_

“Okay, show of hands: who else just can’t take Samwise here seriously anymore after all three Lord of the Rings movies?”

Eight seconds. Even though he had been gone for the last three years, Jason was sure that this was a new quiet-time record for Dick Grayson. The frown must have shown on his face at least a little, because Barbara’s raised hand was accompanied by a cheeky grin. To her right, Robin sighed. “Give the man a chance, Dickie. Perhaps the dialogue will actually make up for the fake hardass stare.”

_“Life happens in four dimensions. Substract time from that equation and all you have is space. No motion. No change.”_

“And yet, as he is saying that, shit is happening and moving on screen,” Jason growled. His right hand retrieved the lighter from one of the little pockets in the inside of his hood and flicked it on and off almost instinctively. He doubted there was any chance he would be able to skip out onto the rooftop for a quick smoke. And even if there was, neither Dick nor Barbara would probably ever let him hear the end of it. The replacement neither, most likely. “And in slow mo no less.” Just what the hell had he been thinking, letting the three of them rope him into this? “This movie is how long exactly?”

“Eighty-nine minutes,” Barb replied without even looking at the box. Judging from the tone of her voice, this was not the first time Dick had forced her to watch it. Hell, he had probably screened it to her with the explicit intention of making sure there was nothing in there that could potentially trigger one of his outbursts. As the narration continued, Jason rubbed his forehead to relieve the headache that was starting to build up in there. He had been through four-hundred and forty-two days with the Joker. He would be damned if he couldn’t take eighty-nine minutes of this. From the couch, Dick’s hands reached for the nachos on the table, only to be swatted away by Barbara.

“Not your party. Jason’s first.”

It took every ounce of willpower in him to suppress the involuntary cringe that nearly gripped him. Given that he was sitting only three feet away from two perfectly Robin-conditioned vigilantes and Barbara-fucking-Gordon, it had most likely not gone unnoticed anyway. “Go ahead, I’m not hungry.”

It was only half a lie. His stomach was empty, but his appetite was zero. He had barely managed to keep down breakfast and lunch today and had been more than happy to skip dinner, even though he could practically hear Alfred bemoan his lack of proper self-caretaking and the little street kid inside him cried out over the thought of turning down the opportunity for food. He was one-hundred percent sure that his breakfast and lunch had been perfectly safe. He was… about eighty-five percent sure that there was nothing rotten, toxic, mind-altering or otherwise incapacitating in the guacamole and the chili dip Barb and Dick had cooked up together, although given all the heated discussions they had had over his… vigilantism methods… he would not be surprised to find traces of alprazolam, quetiapine, lamotrigine or something along those lines in there. There was no way he was touching any of it first.

“See, Babs. All fair game.” If Dick had any inkling of the real reason behind his refusal, he wasn’t showing it. Jason watched him scoop up the chili dip as if his nachos were a spoon, only to nearly choke when the spiciness fully set in, and he couldn’t suppress a grin. “Jeez, Barb, how much chili did you put in there?”

“Enough to make sure you won’t eat it all within the first thirty minutes,” Barb replied, clearly not in the least affected by her own handful of chili chips. It was a smart move. Dick was a nervous eater. Jason remembered the last time they had sat down together to watch a movie. Dick had practically claimed a monopoly on Alfred’s custard dip, plowing through a full bowl in less than an hour. Usually, the title of ‘Bottomless Pit of Hunger’ was reserved for Jason. He had decided to chalk Dick’s sudden voraciousness up as a nervous tick, brought on by having to actually sit still for an hour or two to watch a movie. Whatever the reason, karma, being her usual bitchy self, had found Dick an hour later as he had thrown up most of the snacks.

“You freaks can have the spicy, I’ll just—” The replacement’s hand froze above the guacamole, his eyes fixated on the screen in shock. Barbara instinctively hit the pause button. “Barb, can you rewind that slowly please?” They watched as the video rolled back slowly. On screen, ominous, white lightning flickered across the screen. Jason cringed hard.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, please don’t tell me they are trying to ‘visualize’ radio waves and microwaves…”

On the couch, both Barb and the replacement looked like they were ready to cry. Dick, who – at some point – had decided to ditch the couch for the carpet and was now sitting with his legs in a rather painful looking tangle a few feet away from Jason, grinned at him with a mad glee only revenge could produce. “Hey, Jason, you wouldn’t happen to have any alcohol at home? You know, now that you’re actually _legally_ allowed to drink.”

It was a strictly rhetorical question and they both knew it. Jason remembered that day in January at Wayne Tower, when the four of them had sat down by the bar while watching Bruce’s last goodbyes on video. He remembered downing an entire bottle of Santa Priscan rum and feeling utterly disappointed by the lack of intoxication. He also remembered Dick’s playful jab at him for underage drinking – Dick was a legit police officer now, after all – and the pained look of realization on his face when Jason had let it slip that that was nowhere near his first time trying to get smashed. Dick seemed to remember it, too, if the mildly concerned tone swinging underneath his words was anything to go by. Jason neither had the energy nor the patience to deal with it now.

“If you have anything to say, just get it over with, _Dick_.”

“Horribly inaccurate representation of scientific facts, objects or events. Take a shot.”

Barbara’s face went even paler than usual, if that was humanly possible. “Oh, dear god, Dick! If we’re gonna start that drinking game again, we’re gonna be hammered before half the movie’s over.”

“We did just fine last time,” Dick mumbled in reply, but Barb was having none of it.

“ _Last time_ , we were all teenagers and our ‘drink’ was Alfred’s tropical fruit punch. I would like to maintain a good relationship with my liver, thank you very much.”

Next to her, the replacement looked on in mild confusion. That’s when it hit Jason like a kick to the gut.

They had never done this since.

The memories came back unbidden in quick flashes of pain and hazy pictures. He had had so many nightmares in which Dick, Barb and his replacement had been sitting on that plush couch in Wayne Manor, watching movies on an obscenely big flat-screen TV, munching on Alfred’s best party food, laughing, smiling, joking, all while Jason was sitting just a few feet away, getting torn apart by a mad clown with knives, nails, crowbars and whatever else was at hand at the time. He would scream and yell for someone to help him, someone, anyone, _please_ , but it never happened. Even as the credits rolled and everyone went to bed, he would still be sitting, hanging or lying there, bleeding all over that immaculate carpet.

But the replacement didn’t know. He didn’t know about the drinking game. Judging from his lack of reaction to Barb’s earlier jabs, he did not know about Dick’s lack of movie manners either. He didn’t know. Ergo, he had never sat down with them for a movie. Ergo, they most likely hadn’t had any movie sessions together since…

“Pause the vid for a minute, will ya.” His ankle and back protested at the motion of standing up and walking to the kitchen, but he forced the pain down into the depths before it could show on his face. Thankfully, Dick and Barb had done an adequate job of putting everything back where it belonged. The glasses – he had exactly four because that’s how many the one-dollar-set from the donation store came with – were where they had been since he had moved in. So were the bottles of Park Row moonshine. He felt a smirk tug at the corners of his lips as he returned to the living room and set the glasses on the table. Sure enough, the replacement’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the bottle.

“Should I be slightly alarmed by the fact that there are no labels on that?”

“Park Row moonshine,” Jason replied as casually as he could. Dick’s sudden yelp really made suppressing that smirk quite tricky.

“Jesus Christ, Jason, I was going for mild intoxication, not blindness and liquor-induced coma!”

“Well, _I_ was,” Jason replied as he filled up the glasses. He wasn’t even joking. He had … procured six bottles of the stuff, knowing that nothing short of overkill would do tonight. He hadn’t planned to share them, though. “It’s the only thing I’ve got, so take it or leave it.” He put the bottle down next to the table and returned to his spot by the window. His ankle thanked him for sitting down again. His back did not. “Horribly inaccurate representation of scientific facts, objects or events. Take a shot.”

The liquor ran down his throat cool and yet burning at the same time. For moonshine, it was surprisingly sweet. For Park Row moonshine, it was actually sort of tame and only mildly hazardous.

Judging from the onslaught of choking, coughing and spluttering, his siblings thought otherwise. The replacement was the first to regain his voice, albeit sounding as if he had swallowed a set of razor blades.

“Oh god, that stuff is awful!”

“I think my stomach wants to murder me,” Barbara murmured as she put the glass back on the table.

“ _This_ was a horrible idea,” Dick agreed.

Jason just shrugged his shoulders. “It was _your_ idea, Goldie. Now take it like a man and let’s get through this damn movie. One shot at a time.”

Regret was evident on Barbara’s face as she pushed ‘play’ once more and the film continued. Soon enough, the horribly kitschy narration was done and the opening credits started appearing on screen, accompanied by sets of brightly colored, multi-line waves. He wasn’t sure whether it was the boredom from having to sit through these credits or the tingling of moonshine in his empty stomach, that compelled his hands to move, but he reached for the nachos and chili dip nonetheless. To his surprise, the dip really was delicious. “Welcome to Windows 95 screensaver hell.”

“Where bad design choices go to burn.” Barb grinned at him over her own set of guacamole nachos. On screen, the world’s two most obvious undercover agents started spouting exposition about the unfortunately named not-Samwise ‘Conway Stuart’.

_“Looks like all the other lonely programmers to me.”_

“Everyone, take a shot for rampant stereotyping!” He raised his glass even as his ‘guests’ looked at him in mild horror.

“Do we have to?” Dick managed to mutter over his own moonshine.

“Yes, you do. It’s your punishment for breaking into my apartment. You’re getting off easy. Now drink.” He accompanied the order with a low growl and a territorial stare and was pleased to find all three intruders take their next reluctant sip. It didn’t go down any better than the first. Some sick, sadistic part of him was strangely happy about that.

Soon enough, everyone was once more focused on Mr. and Mrs. Obvious Agent, as exposition time slowly continued, to be interrupted by the obvious, necessary romance sub plot. Technically – if he recalled correctly – that one would have necessitated another shot. Thankfully, the narration and performance of the goofy male agent was enough to bring another thought to mind.

“He’s gonna die,” the replacement stated, as if it were a law of physics, irreversible, undeniable.

“Definitely gonna die,” Barbara agreed.

“Hopefully sooner rather than later,” Jason muttered. He hadn’t had any patience for the plot tumors that were romantic subplots in non-romance movies when he had been a teenager and apparently some things never changed. And perhaps there was a god, because soon enough a near traffic accident had the scene switch to a couple of characters who were sooooo obviously not suspicious that they should have been canonized six minutes ago.

_“Bloody Yanks! Not enough they drive on the wrong side. They're colorblind, as well.”_

“Hey, everyone,” he felt the grin stretch across his lips slowly. “More stereotyping!”

This time, no one complained. Apparently, some people did not need months of torture to resign themselves to their fate. “To your good health, Jason,” Dick muttered under his breath as he took another shot, a sip really.

On screen, Mr. Bloody Yanks at least showed enough brains to properly time and plan a bank robbery. Jason wondered whether it was just his own screwed up past that made him think that the hardened career criminal was the sanest and most relatable person in this godawful movie Dick had provided so far. Unfortunately, they were soon back to the romantic plot tumor duo, now shadowing not-Samwise in a bank. He could see where this was going. Of course the bank robbery would take place exactly in that same bank at exactly the same time. Mr. So-Totally-Not-Undercover would die, the robbers would get the time travelling gizmo and FBI Chick and Not-Sam would have to work together to get it back.

_Thank god for the moonshine. This is going to be painful._

To his surprise, the movie actually bothered to show the working of the titular slipstream device while somehow managing to pack yet another romantic subplot in there. Jason felt slightly comforted by the fact that not-Samwise proved that there were in fact people who were even less used to normal human interaction than he himself was, only to have the brief moment of relief ruined by another radio tower flickering with ominous waves. This time, glasses were emptied. And he did not even have to say a word. He caught Dick and Barb looking at him with pleading eyes as he filled up all four glasses once more.

“What about you, replacement? Not gonna beg me to stop poisoning you guys?”

Robin simply shook his head and took another sip. “We’ve brought this on ourselves. _Your_ house, _your_ rules.”

 _And next time you come to visit Barb and me, we shall have glorious revenge_ , was what he had probably wanted to add, but Jason couldn’t have cared less. There was nothing they could do to him that Joker hadn’t done to him already. As far as Jason was concerned, threats had lost their bite.

“Who the hell puts their secret, government-funded, time-travelling app on their home screen?” Barbara sounded downright insulted. Considering all the troubles that all of them had gone through to keep their vigilante identities concealed from the rest of the word, he couldn’t blame her. He did not even want to imagine what Bruce would have done if any of them had put anything from the Batcomputer on their private phones.

 _“Forgive me,”_ not-Samwise stuttered on-screen _. “I really want to get to know you, as a person. I want to have a deep conversation with you. Every time I get the opportunity, I can't help but fixate on your perfect skin, your cornflower eyes, your scent. It's like you just stepped out of a bath.”_

On the couch, Barbara took one of those deep sighs that she had always reserved for the worst douchebags hitting on her. “And this, boys, is how you make sure that you don’t get laid. Ever.”

_“I hope you take this as a compliment. You're just so ripe. Like a... piece of fruit. I can't stand it. I just want to eat you.”_

“It’s a very good shortcut to a restraining order, though,” Jason admitted. He wondered if anybody could be this inept at expressing emotional attraction in real-life. He hoped so. He would look perfectly average next to this guy. “Can we please get to the bank robbery now? I’m about to fall asleep here.”

It took another couple of minutes for his wish to be granted. By the time it happened, Jason wished he had just shut the hell up.

Of course all the action scenes were in slow motion, incidentally making everyone look twice as stupid as their faces contorted for what would normally be split seconds to react to muzzle flashes and gunshots. Speaking of which, of course every gun sounded the same going off during the robbery. Of course magazines were bottomless and when they were not, people did not seem to know how to quickly reload. Of course nobody could shoot for crap even if their targets were six feet in front of them and of course a gunshot wound to the stomach left Mr. Definitely-Gonna-Die bleeding out just long enough for a tearful goodbye. The fact that Ivana Milicevic delivered the flattest, least emotionally gripping ‘please don’t die’ speech he had ever seen on screen did not improve the scene in the slightest.

Shots of the alcoholic kind were taken for all the horrible inaccuracies and when the robbery was finally over and done, the bottle was empty. By the time he returned from the kitchen with another, the previously competent-seeming bank robber chick who had turned out to be the worst get-away-driver ever had managed to total the van. Of course, the new get away vehicle of choice was a bus.

“Because when you want to quickly escape from a crime scene, your best option is always the most massive car with the slowest acceleration!” This time, Barbara actually held up her glass so he could fill it faster. Apparently, she had come to agree with him that blind and completely hammered was the only sane state in which to watch this movie. The birds were decidedly less enthusiastic, but he couldn’t care less. He watched wearily as the crashed van exploded into fiery bits of medal for no reason at all.

“Stuff exploding out of nowhere. Down the entire glass.” He started the refilling with his own and finished with Dick’s, whose pleading puppy dog eyes were met with a quick shrug. He regretted it as soon as his shoulders reminded him that fast, sudden movements were a horribly bad idea for limbs affected by nerve damage.

“Are you alright, Jason?”

“Just peachy.” Of course the replacement had picked up on it. He wasn’t entirely sure which part of his body had betrayed him, maybe a fleeting look of pain on his face or a wincing of his shoulders, but he just HAD to notice. He was painfully aware that all eyes were on him once more as he moved over to his seat by the window and decided to ignore the unspoken questions in favor of another glass of moonshine. The only way he could have been feeling any more like a sitting duck was if Bruce himself had been there.

Perhaps it was an omen that, for the next twenty minutes, the movie proved to be mostly boring non-sense with the weirdest time skips ever, yet woefully lacking in drinking game worthy moments, outside of the least believable cover-up story ever delivered, granting him full, unrestricted and uncontested access to the moonshine bottle and its contents. Sadly, all good things had to come to an end. In this case, the end were several packs of C4 duct-taped to a panicking bus driver.

“Unrealistically bloodless explosion that leaves nothing burning and nobody momentarily deaf. Take a shot.”

From his perch in front of the couch, Dick shot him a nasty look. “That poor bus driver just got blown to bits, Jason.”

“Newsflash, Dickie, movies ain’t real.” He grabbed the glass from his older brother’s hands, filled it up and handed it back without a second glance, before moving on to the replacement and Barbara. “And even if they were, there are worse ways to go. _Way_ worse. Explosions are quick.” At least when they were of the lethal kind. He remembered the feeling as pieces of a tiled wall had come apart right next to him and buried in his arms, courtesy of Joker testing out Jason’s own explosive gel on the walls of his prison. Back then he had wished Joker had sprayed it on the black-and-yellow R on his chest. It would have been quick. Even more importantly, it would have been final. “I’ll go and grab the next bottle.”

“You know, if you have anything to say, just get it over with _, Jason_.”

And there it was. The Dick Grayson method of insulting people – throwing their own snide remarks right back at them as if they were Batarangs, right when they least expected it. _Don’t fall for it,_ not-Robin warned. _There’s no way that this—_

“Dick, you can either sit here, shut up, watch the damn movie and drink the shine, or you can try to psychoanalyze me, get kicked out and come back tomorrow morning to find this place cleared out, understood?” On the couch, Barb and Robin had practically frozen in place. Dick was looking up at him with his hands planted firmly on the ground next to his feet. _A pouncing position_ , not-Robin analyzed. _Ready to jump up and tackle you in 3-2—_ “And don’t think I won’t be able to disappear off the face of the earth. I’ve had more time to master the art of being a nameless ghost than all three of you combined.”

He didn’t wait for the reply. Whatever Dick had to say in response, he didn’t want to hear it. The empty bottle landed in the trash can with a loud thud. He retrieved the third one from its hiding place among all the cleaners beneath the kitchen sink and drank straight from the bottle. He should probably put them somewhere else, just in the miraculous case he would actually get drunk enough to mistake glass for plastic and reach for something that would eat straight through his stomach. Then again, that was probably why he had put them there in the first place. Out of the corner of his eye, Jason caught movement in living room. Perhaps they really had decided that enough was enough. Abort mission. Experiment failed. Let’s go home. Trial and error, right?

“I’m really sorry about that, Jason.”

That nearly made him laugh. He put the half-empty bottle down quickly and shook his head. At the other end of the kitchen, Barb was sitting in her wheel chair, firm and silent as a rock. Behind her, he could see Robin 1.0 and 3.0 argue. Probably about him. Part of him wished he had the helmet on and his sensors cranked up to amplify their whispers. The other part shuddered at the thought of what he would be hearing.

“What were you expecting, Barb? That we were all just gonna sit down and laugh and joke and gorge ourselves on snacks like we used to?”

“Well, let’s say I’m not surprised we ditched Alfred’s fruit punch for hazardous home-brewing.” To his surprise, she snatched the bottle from him and drained it of another quarter of its content. Judging from the face she made when she was done, it was an act of desperation. Barbara caught his look and shrugged her shoulders. “Like medicine, right? The worse it tastes, the better it works.”

The slight chuckle that escaped his throat was followed by utter silence. What was there to say, anyway? He had known that this little surprise birthday party was doomed from the start, and so had Barb. Dick had probably known it too, even if he had most likely stubbornly refused to believe it. The replacement… well, he couldn’t honestly say he knew the guy half well enough to take an educated guess on his stance in the matter. And yet, he had been the one to step in before. “I suppose your husband will be strolling in here any minute now to give us some sappy speech on why we’re supposed to get back to the TV and finish the goddamn movie. God help we ruin his master plan.”

That made her laugh. It was a small laugh, roughed up a little by remnants of moonshine, but somehow it still made him feel slightly better. At least Barbara wasn’t completely pissed off with him. Small blessings. “You think this party was Tim’s idea?” She took another deep gulp from the bottle and shook her head at him. “He thought it was a terrible idea, particularly since he had to be the living bait and distraction for this one. No, this one’s on Dick and I’ll expect him to take full responsibility when this is over.”

“I see.” Dick had always been a hopeless optimist. He grabbed the bottle and took a sip of his own. “I suppose it didn’t occur to either one of you that breaking into my apartment would be a bad idea and to… oh, I don’t know… TALK HIM OUT OF IT?”

“We tried…” He watched her roll over to open the fridge and caught a glimpse of the massive cake still waiting, cooling. His stomach turned at the sight. If she was going to suggest cutting and eating that right now, he’d really have to throw the three of them out and torch the place. Thankfully, the only thing she retrieved was a pack of sliced cheese. A good enough counter for the alcohol, he supposed. “… but to be perfectly honest, he made a good point. It’s been ten months now, Jason, and outside of handing you the keys to this place none of us have spent a single minute with you that did not have anything to do with saving Gotham or dealing with Bruce’s death.”

“He’s not dead, Barb.”

“Jason, please—“

“Or is that how you were comforting yourselves while Joker was tearing me apart in Arkham?” He wasn’t entirely sure when his voice had become a growl, but it had. “Is that what you told yourselves so you could rest easy at night? That I was dead and gone already?!”

“It’s what _I_ did, yes.” The words hit him harder than any of Joker’s crowbar swings ever had. He couldn’t fathom why, but it hurt. Like a barbed thorn the words sunk into him and anchored themselves underneath his skin. Judging from the way Barbara barely managed to look him in the eyes, she knew. “I don’t know how Bruce and Dick did it, but they believed, they hoped that you were alive right up until your seventeenth birthday when Joker sent us that video. I can’t speak for them, but me… every single time I ran into one of Joker’s crew I would go to bed with nightmares after patrol, thinking of all the things he could possibly be doing to you. We spent months searching up and down all of Gotham and found nothing. And eventually it dawned on me… the fact that death was probably the kindest thing that could have happened to you in Joker’s hands. I believed… I _hoped_ that you were dead because all alternatives I could think of were so much worse. I pitied Bruce and Dick for still deluding themselves into thinking that there was any way you could still be alive. And then we got that damn video…”

He watched her slam the fridge door shut and reach for the moonshine once more. “Bruce and Dick never gave up. Not even after you were ‘dead’. They kept on combing through that video and that crime scene atop Mercy Bridge over and over for any sign, any trace of where you were, but me… I just wanted to curl up in a corner and hang my head in shame, because somewhere along the way, I had taken the easy way out. To tell you the truth, when Joker shot me four months later, it almost felt like karma.” Another gulp and the bottle was empty. She looked at the brown glass with thinly veiled disgust and set it back on the counter. Jason could only blame it on months of carefully taught cleaning reflexes that he swiped it immediately and put it into the garbage can where it belonged. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious, deliberate action. He doubted his brain was capable of any of that at the moment.

“If it is any consolation to you, I gave up on myself, too,” Barbara confessed. “After I woke up in the hospital and they told me that I was paralyzed from the waist down. All I could think about was all the things I would no longer be able to do – walking, running, jumping, kicking, dancing, gymnastics, martial arts—“

“Vigilantism?” He retrieved the fourth bottle, removed the cap and handed it straight over to her. Barbara took a long chug and looked at him with a disdain he hadn’t seen on her face since he had broken into the clock tower, back when he had still been the Arkham Knight.

“Fuck vigilantism, I can’t even _stand_ anymore, Jason.” He couldn’t help but cringe. ‘Fuck’ was not a word commonly heard from any of the other bats and birds. Hearing it from Barbara was nothing short of surreal. “I was twenty-two and a cripple. From where I was sitting – not standing – my life was over. So I didn’t go to the therapy sessions dad scheduled and Bruce funded for me, physical or otherwise. I let Dick’s calls go to voice-mail, same as all my friends’ really. If they sent me mails, I deleted them. If they had the audacity to actually come to my place, I’d just disable the doorbell. I just sat there in my bed, watching cheap TV, eating crappy food and thinking about all I had lost.” She handed the bottle back to him and let her head fall back against the top of her chair. “Sometimes, we all need somebody to set our head straight. By force, if necessary.”

Is that what this was? A valiant effort on part of his ‘family’ to ‘set his head straight’? He almost snorted out his gulp of moonshine. If it was, they hadn’t done a very good job at it. “So who was it?”

“Hm?”

“Who ‘set your head straight’?” He accompanied the ridiculous expression with equally ridiculous air quotes and was pleased to see a hint of a smile ghost across her lips.

“Tim.” He followed her gaze to the living room. Robin 1.0 and 3.0 were apparently still arguing, Dick being his usual, wildly gesticulating self. The replacement on the other hand seemed to be channeling not-dead Bruce. He was standing like a rock, hardly making a sound. “I should have seen it coming,” Barbara chuckled. “When Bruce started getting out of hand, nearly murdering every clown-faced thug he could find, Tim was the one to reel him back in. Tim and Alfred. One day he just showed up inside my apartment. He had ‘borrowed’ the cryptographic sequencer from the Batcave, hacked his way through the security and the video footage at the Clock Tower and picked my door lock. By his own admission, that last one was actually the hardest part.”

Jason couldn’t help but grin at that. Picking locks was one of the first skills he had picked up on the street, to the point where a lock pick felt more comfortable in his hand than a pen. The first time he had found his way into the Batcave, he had cracked one of the storage lockers with nothing but two paperclips and just for a split second Bruce had looked at him like a deer in the headlights. The next day, all the locks had been upgraded. Yeah, Robin 2.0 had had a very peculiar skill set.

“At that point, were the two of you already…”

“Dating?” Barb finished for him and he nodded slightly. It still seemed too strange. He had always pictured her ending up with Dick, particularly since there had been _something_ between them, he knew. “Sort of… on and off. It’s a little complicated. I had already been through the vigilantism vs. romance thing with Dick and I was pretty weary of it. Anyway…” She grabbed the bottle once more and took another deep draft. “At first I just yelled at him. To get out. To leave me alone. To stop wasting my time. But he just kept on sitting there, in my wheel chair no less, so I was stuck in bed having to listen to whatever he was going to say.”

“What did he say?”

“That he would not leave until I told him why I was acting like the world had come to an end. So I let him have it. I told him how sick and tired I was of how broken I was and all the things I could no longer do and that I’d rather be dead.”

“I take it that didn’t go to well.”

“He slapped me.”

This time, he did spit out his drink. He wiped his mouth clean with the sleeve of his hoodie and set the bottle back on the counter before he could do any more damage. “He did _what_ now?”

“Slapped me right in the face.” Jason wasn’t sure what was more disturbing – the fact that they were having this conversation, or the eerily nonchalant way in which Barbara was talking about her now-husband hitting her. “I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he just looked at me and said: ‘Barbara, what Joker has done to you is awful. It’s unforgivable and you have every right to be furious. But you are more than your legs. And you _are_ still alive and that’s more than a lot of other people can say for themselves. It’s more than _Jason_ can say for himself, so unless you have a way to trade your life for his and bring him back from beyond the grave, none of us ever want to hear the words ‘I’d rather be dead’ out of your mouth ever again’.”

“Seriously?” He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about being used as a bargaining chip in a debate over the pros and cons of suicide. It was creepy, insulting and yet strangely flattering all at once and it tied his stomach into a hundred knots.

“Seriously.” Somehow, Barb’s hands found their way around his left hand, fingers accidentally grazing over the scars in his palm. He had been trying so hard to hide his palms from everyone for exactly that reason, he had begged Lucius not to tell anyone when he had first noticed after shaking hands – and he winced at the touch. Part of him wanted nothing more than to ball his fingers into a fist and pull away, but his muscles just didn’t obey. He watched Barbara turn his hand over to look at the marred tissue. Her eyes narrowed almost immediately in carefully veiled concern and fury. Even now there was still so much of Batgirl in her… “Look like burn scars.”

The memories came back instantly. Glowing hot metal on cold clammy skin. A blood-red grin. Laughter. Questions, questions, questions, and insufficient answers. Never sufficient answers and it was his own fault, too. Not enough information. No ‘sir’ at the end of the sentence. No use. No manners. More glowing hot metal. He wanted to close his eyes against the unbidden images, but he knew from experience that that would only make it worse, so instead, Jason focused on the most colorful and distractingly mundane thing he could find in his kitchen at that precise moment: Barbara’s backpack, hanging from the back of her wheel chair.

“I didn’t tell him. That’s how I got those.”

“Didn’t tell him what? Batman’s real name?” Barb’s voice was soft now, almost a whisper. He wished he could run, but his feet were frozen in place, too. Another painful memory.

“Batgirl’s. Or Nightwing’s. Whichever he was asking for at the time.”

_Who is Nightbrat? Who is mini-bats in heels? Come on, Todders, they are not worth it! Don’t you feel lonely, stuck down here, all on your own all this time? I could give you some company. It would serve them right for leaving you like this. Wouldn’t you like to see them again, Jason? I always thought bats and robins lived in flocks? It will be one big family reunion…_

“Most of the time he didn’t really give me a reason for tearing me apart, but sometimes… sometimes he asked. I believe the master plan was to kidnap all three of us and send us back to Bruce in itty bitty pieces.” _And the Arkham Knight would have let him_. He remembered the nightmare he had had – one of the last he had ever had during his time in Arkham – of Bruce receiving a box with pieces of Nightwing for a present, Gordon receiving a set of pictures of a mutilated, unmasked batgirl. The Arkham Knight had smiled at the thought, while Jason had been stuck between horrified, nauseous and utterly despaired, a prisoner in his own mind, for lack of a better metaphor.

In the end, Jim _had_ received a set of pictures of Batgirl, even if he hadn’t known that it was Batgirl. His eyes wandered from the backpack down the back rest of the chair to the wheels and on to Barbara’s legs. Her long, beautiful and absolutely useless legs.

“Maybe this is my fault, too. What he did to you, I mean. I don’t remember ever telling him either of your names, but I’ve got scars on me that I don’t know where the fuck I got them from and who’s to say what I told him when he gave me those? I might have told him and I’ll never even know. What if—“

“Hush, Jason, hush!” He wasn’t sure how it had happened or when, but suddenly Dick was there, one hand buried in Jason’s hair, the other stroking his back. He could feel the pulse from Dick’s carotid artery, far too erratic, against the brand burning on his left cheek. “You didn’t tell him anything, Jason. You didn’t tell him anything.” Or maybe it wasn’t Dick. Dick Grayson never sounded so afraid. _Except for last January when he first found out you were still alive_ , not-Robin reminded him. He had hugged him then, too, the same action of despair, a silent prayer for this to be real and not a cruel joke, a dream. “But I swear to God, if I had known that that’s what it would have taken to get him to take us to you, I would have plastered my name, address and work schedule on every billboard in Gotham and Blüdhaven.”

“Bruce would have murdered you.” He didn’t know why that was the first thing that had come to his mind, but it made Dick laugh. He tried to let the sound bleed over into his own brain. It didn’t work nearly as well as he had hoped, but the fact that it helped at all, even if only by making his body relax enough to finally allow him to breathe again, was a miracle in and of itself. He was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. As much as he hated himself for even thinking it, as much as the Arkham Knight would have hated him for daring to consider it, he decided to let the moment drag on a little longer.

“Nah, Bruce doesn’t kill, remember?” Dick cooed.

“No,” Robin agreed. “He’d just have locked you up in an isolation chamber, cut your communications and not bothered to speak another word to you until the big bad was safely behind bars.”

It was the sarcasm dripping from Robin’s voice that made Jason chuckle. He knew he shouldn’t. Tim had nearly died because of Bruce’s stupid paranoia and isolation policy. It was really NOT funny.

“I think all three of you would have been grounded for life,” Barbara chimed in. “No more Robin. Ever.”

“Well, technically…” When Dick finally let go of him and stepped back once more, he had a mischievous grin plastered on his face. The last time Jason had seen him like this, they had made good use of Jason’s car-jacking experience to speed-re-paint the Batmobile Robin-red as a prank. Bruce had not been amused. “Technically, I was already over eighteen and depending on when I would have pulled that stunt, Tim would not even have been legally his son yet, so he couldn’t have done jack to either of us.”

“Yeah, and it was not like he had the slightest fucking idea where I even was at the time so—“ His eyes caught the shocked looks on everyone’s faces long before his brain realized what he had just said. “What?”

“Wow…” Robin reached for the moonshine and downed the last few gulps left in the bottle in one chug. “Dick and Barb warned me that you had a dark sense of humor, but Jesus Christ, Jason…”

“Not! Funny!” Dick jabbed him in the ribs. “Thankfully I know the perfect punishment.”

“Octopus hug?” Robin asked.

“Rewinding that movie to make us continue where we left off instead of blissfully ignoring the twenty minutes we just missed?” Barbara offered.

Dick grinned at all of them. “Nope. Early diabetes, obesity and full-scale caries for everyone!”

Jason could practically feel the color drain from his face as he watched him retrieve the cake from the fridge and carry it to the living room. Barbara was fast on his heels, the largest knife she had found in his kitchen, four forks and four plates in her lap. He gripped the edges of the counter hard and tried to force his pulse and breathing back into acceptable ranges. This could not be happening. He wondered if it was too late to grab his grapnel hook and guns from the opposite kitchen counter and disappear into the night. The answer came in the form of a red vest suddenly blocking the line of sight between him and his gadgets.

“You know, I’m not wearing the cowl right now, but I can see you sweat a bucket and tremble like a leaf over there, so I am just going to assume that the cake was a horrible idea for some reason. So let’s make a deal: I will keep Dick off your back when you say no, so long as you tell him _why_ you say no, okay?”

“Why?” The word felt strange on his tongue. _Why_ had never been a very popular word in his vocabulary, mostly because the answers were usually very complicated, absolutely horrible or terribly disappointing. Not to mention, Willis Todd had usually answered the question with his fists, his belt or the butt of his gun. Bruce had usually answered it with a scowl. Joker had usually answered it with torture. So, yeah, _why_ – not a very good word in any circumstance. Useless at best. Hazardous at worst.

“Because he deserves that much. You have no idea how much not knowing where you were or what had happened to you hurt him, how utterly helpless it made him feel.” He watched Robin glance back and forth between the duo in the living room and the cornered guest of honor in the kitchen. If he had been dressed all in black and if it hadn’t been for the way his emotions played off the muscles on his face, he could have passed for Bruce. “You’re my brother, Jason, and I want to help you. But Dick is our brother, too.”

In the living room, Barbara and Dick were merrily cutting the cake into eight parts. Robin strolled over and paused the video, much to Barbara’s apparent dismay. On the opposite counter, the guns and grapnel hook looked more than inviting. He had already given away too much tonight, dragged too many bad memories back from the depths. This is exactly what he had been trying to avoid. He was just about done checking his guns – they were in perfect working order of course, but the motions felt familiar and comforting and steadied his hands – when he noticed the slightly crumbled sheet of paper next to the stove. Either his mind was playing tricks on him, which would not be the first time, or someone had taken a lesson in gas lighting and slipped it into the scenery when he hadn’t been looking. Whoever it had been was in for a world of hurt and yet he couldn’t help himself.

It was a recipe, neatly printed out and only slightly marred by the occasional spatter of flour and oil. Black Forest cake. At the bottom of the ingredients list for the whipped cream icing, two notes stood out that made him clutch the paper hard in his burnt hands:

_1 tsp vanilla (J!)_

_Sour cherries, not Maraschino! (J!)_

He knew where they had gotten that recipe from. It was a database he had copied not even a day after moving into his apartment. It had been kept separate from the Batcomputer, from the vigilantism, a perfectly mundane Google Drive collection that only few people knew about and even less had access to. Something purely domestic, harmless and not at all vigilantism-related and Alfred had insisted on keeping it that way. As a matter of fact, if it had been up to him, there would have been no database, just the old, dusty book in which Alfred kept all his recipes, perfectly ordinary except for the little marks here and there, notes to keep track of the preferences of Wayne Manor’s residents. _MG_ for Master Grayson, _MB_ for Master Bruce, but only Jason had been given the honor of being just _J_. No need for formalities. When he had begged Alfred to let him copy the recipes and the butler had refused, Jason had felt nothing short of crushed.

Until Alfred had given him the link to the database. Neatly arranged just for him. It had been August 16th 2010\. His fifteenth birthday.

“Alfred…”

“So… are you coming or not?” From the black leather couch, Dick’s bright smile beamed at him. Behind him, Robin stood like a silent shadow.

_Your move, Jason._

He made it all the way to the couch, flash bang grenade concealed in one of the little pockets he had sewn into his hood, before his feet froze in place. There it was – red, white, brown and utterly real. Just looking at the cake made his lungs go up in flames and the laughter soar in his head. “I can’t.”

 _Alfred’s recipe, not Joker’,_ not-Robin reminded him _. Baked by Dick and Barb, not Sweet Tooth. You can do this._

“I can’t…” He couldn’t breathe and he certainly couldn’t eat. He remembered it all too well. The choking… the laughing… and, god, had it hurt! Laughing was supposed to be nice, enjoyable, but it had been as if someone had been tearing him apart from the inside, ripping his lungs to shreds inch by inch. Every muscle in his body had been screaming in protest at the sudden movements, the cramps, and all he had been able to do was laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh and laugh until he had finally run out of air and the darkness had claimed him. But even then the laughter had continued, a constant background noise. Joker’s voice, Jason’s voice, _Bruce’s_ voice and somewhere along the line they had all become one. And it had never stopped. Even now, somewhere in the background noise of the static hum from Barbara’s laptop and the pattering of the rain against the windows of his apartment, they were still laughing. “I can’t…”

“Joker poisoned your food, didn’t he.” It was a statement, not a question. Jason felt strangely disconnected from his own body as he watched Robin push all plates but the one with the smallest piece of cake to the far side of the table. As ridiculous as it seemed, every inch between him and that damn cake was a blessing. A cold trail of sweat ran down his spine as he watched Robin pick up the closest fork and scoop off the tip of the piece. He wanted to shout at him, to grab him, to slap that fork out of his hands. This couldn’t be happening. Not another boy in a red suit, not again, just, please, not again—

“Well, you may not know, but this is Alfred’s recipe…” Barbara added as she grabbed another fork and claimed a piece of her own.

“…and the only dangerous thing in this cake is the obscene amount of sugar.”

Of course, Dick carved off an extra-large piece for himself. Barbara shot him a nasty look over her own fork. “Well, that suit of yours is fifty percent spandex, so I’m sure you’ll manage.”

They bit down on their respective forks full of cake in perfect unison, as if the entire charade had been planned out before. Maybe it had been. He didn’t know. All Jason knew was that any minute now the choking would start. The coughing. The laughing. Dread climbed out of his gut and into his throat, gripping the warning cry that had been trying to weasel its way out of there with claws cold as ice. He watched their necks bulge slightly as they swallowed. It was done. No way back. The only siblings he’d ever had would be dying a painful death any second now and all he had done was stand there and let it happen. He could practically feel Joker’s breath against his ear, those awful, thin fingers sliding over his shoulders, as the clown giggled behind him. Any second now.

“Wow.” Robin stared at his fork as if it were made of frosting. “Screw Edesia. Alfred is the real god of food.”

“Best part about living at the manor,” Dick grinned at him, his upper lip lined by a thin film of white icing, before holding up the plate and a fresh fork for Jason. “So… please, Jason. As you can see, we’re all still alive. Please?”

He wasn’t sure how or why his hands gripped the plate, but they did. The half-eaten slice of cake stared at him, mocking him. In his ear, Joker howled with excitement. _Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it! Come on, Todders! Open wide and enjoy your birthday cake!_

“Damn… I had forgotten how good chocolate-cherry cake tastes,” Dick hummed while rocking back and forth on the carpet. “I think the last time I had one was for Jason’s fifteenth birthday. Six years, can you believe that?”

“Lucky you,” Tim snapped back him. “My mother hated cherries. Didn’t let any of that anywhere near our house. I don’t think I’ve ever had chocolate-cherry-anything.”

“I honestly don’t remember,” Barbara admitted.

They couldn’t have been any more transparent if they had been made of glass. Jason was sure if he were to look up from the plate right now, he’d be seeing Robin hold a giant, flashing sign reading ‘your turn’ in neon letters. His tongue felt like an oversized, sand-coated sponge in his mouth.

“August 16th, 2011. Laced with Joker venom. Courtesy of Sweet Tooth.”

There. He had done it. He wanted to raise his eyes to stare at the replacement, growl ‘are you happy now?’ at him in the angriest voice he could muster, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the damn cake and the stupid fork. For a moment, the idea of slamming the metal utensil through his own carotid artery and bleeding out on the fucking floor actually seemed like the most reasonable course of action.

From the couch to his left, Barbara’s fingers slowly rose to steady the hand he hadn’t realized had been trembling. “Do you see anybody laughing right now, Jason? It’s okay, really. Just one bite. Please.”

_“Just one bite, Master Todd, please,” Jason couldn’t help but stare at the old man in utter confusion. Since when could people’s voices be that gentle, that… sincere? From the small, porcelain bowl the most alluring scent he had ever smelled wafted up and into his nostrils. Whatever was in there was good. Too good to be true. “If you won’t do it out of hunger, at least do it as a courtesy. Just one bite.”_

“Just one bite…”

He was going to regret this. He knew it even as the fork came down into the layers of the cake – white, brown, white, brown, red, brown, white. He was definitely going to regret this. Compared to the agonizingly timid motions of his hand, the slow motion effects of the stupid movie looked like the Flash on caffeine and yet somehow the fork ended up in his mouth and his taste buds nearly exploded. The cherries were sublime, the cream incredible, the chocolate perfect. He didn’t even remember that food could taste so good. Against his better judgment, Jason swallowed. It was that or choke. He waited for the inevitable to come. The burning, the tearing, the hysteria.

But it never did.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, but it was long enough for someone – _Dick,_ not-Robin pointed out – to take the plate away from him once more. Tim returned wordlessly from the kitchen and handed him another bottle of moonshine. Somehow the familiar feeling of cold glass in his hand made his feet move again, a disjointed, automatic motion. He returned to his spot by the window and watched on in silence as Barbara unpaused the movie. As she had promised earlier, there really was a ridiculous scene in which a single bullet through a cabin window caused an entire plane to crash, accompanied by horribly inaccurate pictures of turbine engine parts that really should have looked like the ones he had been designing for Lucius just a couple of days ago, but didn’t, and technology references so outdated that he was sure the nineties were going to call any minute now, asking to have their techno babble back. This time, every chug of shine for every one of them was accompanied by a teeny, tiny bite of cake.

By the time the movie was done, the slice was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. I had planned to write something that was purely heartwarming fluff and shenanigans and look how that turned out. O_O  
> Also, proof-reading past midnight = really bad idea.


End file.
